Nutloose
Have been reading all the failings in this and the one thing that comes to mind is a lack of a bulletproof contract so everyone knew what was expected and BAe would have been tied to producing an airworthy project or would have paid the price for not delivering what was required.
You are absolutely correct. And it will come as no surprise there are mandated regulations which require such a milestone in a contract. You don’t let a £1Bn contract with a single payment. You have milestones. These milestones must be relevant and achievable. In aircraft programmes they are based on Configuration Milestones, primarily Design Reviews; which in turn are tied to the development of the Safety Case.
However, it would be wrong to have, for example, issuing the Release to Service as a milestone, as that is controlled by the MoD. There is nothing to stop the MoD agreeing all preceding milestones and then refusing to issue an RTS – which is effectively what happened with MRA4. A typical final milestone, or at least a late one tied to a large payment, is achieving Transfer to PDS, when the design comes Under Ministry Control. There is a comprehensive checklist laid down in the mandated Def Stan. If anyone involved in the support or operation of the aircraft (or equipment) studied this list, you’d be quite confident the product was (a) built to spec (b) fully supportable and (c) safe. There are variations on this theme, but the basic concept is sound.
Now the reality. Under the RAF Chief Engineer, PDS was rundown from 1991-onwards. As that is the process which maintains the Build Standard and Safety Case, and the latter MUST be based on a maintained former, the risk was obvious, predicted, notified and ignored. As there was to be no (Full) PDS, then the mandated regulation to achieve Transfer to PDS became meaningless. That is a significant reason why the Nimrod IPT had to let the ill-fated MR2 Safety Case task criticised by Haddon-Cave – because the Chief Engineer’s organisation (AMSO) had decreed them a waste of time and the MR2 work had lapsed. As an airworthy MR2 was a mandatory pre-requisite to a viable MRA4 programme, then it is (and was) obvious to even the most casual observer that the MRA4 programme was fatally compromised by the decision to ignore safety and, quite clearly, should never have passed scrutiny.
Ah, Scrutiny. The Chief Engineer’s immediate subordinate (DGSM) decreed that a sackable offence in December 1992, which explains almost all waste mentioned on here. In effect, the Nimrod IPT was playing catchy up when they let the Safety Case task. The fact they mismanaged it is another story, caused by lack of experience as few had been taught how to do it, due to the work being cancelled 10 years before. Let’s face it, if you’re told it is a sackable offence to do something, most tend to steer clear of it even if they know the work must be done. The real issue is why they had to let it in the first case – it should already have existed, without break, since the Nimrod was first contracted in the 60s. Yes, I know “Safety Cases” were only mandated in the early 90s, but in practice the work has always been done in industry.
Latterly, any attempt by an experienced programme manager to insert all this in a contract has been thwarted, with the clause being cancelled or waived by non-engineers as they see it as a waste of time. They don’t necessarily make a conscious decision that safety is a waste of time (although some do), but that is the effect because they have simply not been trained before acquiring the authority to waive safety, and are not required to be competent. Unscrupulous companies don’t say anything. The better companies actually complain, but are told to wind it in. Today, if you mentioned the above to 95% of staff in DE&S they’d completely topple. And no-one in the MAA is going to mention it, because they are not independent, most are light blue, and we see in the press and Ministerial announcements the influence those retired RAF officers still carry. You will never hear the MAA acknowledge any of the above. If they don’t, then how can they truly understand the scale and scope of their task?
Back to MRA4. The obvious question is – Who was meant to exercise “management oversight” of the above? Answer, for most of the MRA4 programme, is the MoD(PE)/DPA 2 Star, Director General Air Systems 2. What was his formal position on the above? That’s simple. Any programme manager seeking to implement these mandated regulations was subject to disciplinary action. This was issued in writing on at least 3 occasions. I have the letters. He was fully supported by his 4 Star, the Chief of Defence Procurement (who gets his airworthiness delegation direct from Secretary of State). Again, if the MAA would acknowledge these simple facts, they’d be far nearer a solution. But they waltz round it as to do so is a career killer. (Which is presumably far worse than an aircrew killer).
As ever, it isn’t the lack of process or procedure that went wrong, it is the implementation. MoD’s way round this? They cancelled the mandated Def Stan (above), so today there is nowhere to learn this stuff, yet it is as fundamental to an aspiring programme manager as being able to see is to a pilot. This is what allows the MAA to reinvent so many wheels, because the old wheels have been thrown away and staffs aren’t told they ever existed.